Flow and Optimal Difficulty in the Portable EEG: On the Potentiality of using Personalized Frequency Ranges for State Detection

Open-source concealed EEG data collection for Brain-computer-interfaces - neural observation through OpenBCI amplifiers with around-the-ear cEEGrid electrodes

“…because it has often been linked to superior performances, personal and social growth and heightened general well-being [68]. It is not yet possible to continuously and unobtrusively observe flow experiences (i.e., without interruption from surveys) [42]. However, such an ability would open up the possibility to learn about flow experience dynamics and interventions that foster the experience.…”

“…As temporal brain regions (whose activity is primarily collected by the cEEGrids -see [47]) contain such verbal-analytic processing regions [30], the observation of increased/decreased activity in these regions by observation of Alpha power changes could be a way of detecting flow experience intensities. To enable the exploration of this pattern in our experiment, the mental arithmetic task has been designed not only to elicit different mental workloads but in alignment with previous work, to provide the entry conditions for flow through performance-adaptive difficulty in the moderate difficulty condition (this design was adapted from previous flow research -see [39,42]). Performance-adaptive means that the difficulty increased one level after two successful trials in a row and decreased one level after an incorrect trial, thus continually balancing the task difficulty.…”

Information and Market Engineering at KIT: Quo Vadis?

“…In particular, neurophysiological data that can be collected continuously (through sensors worn on the body) has been utilized to build an understanding of how individual and social experiences can be unobtrusively detected in real time. Examples of this work are the research on using heart-rate analysis and feedback in small group interaction to improve intra-and interindividual emotion management during teamwork (Knierim et al 2017b;a) or the research on neurophysiological correlates of flow experiences (Knierim et al 2019a;2017c;. Especially the latter work tackles the challenge of how desirable experiential states (in terms of both individual and social performance, satisfaction and growth) can be observed and eventually facilitated.…”

“…To this extent, current projects are, for example, focusing on how flow experiences can be unobtrusively detected in individuals and small groups in the KW context (e.g. during the process of scientific writing) (Knierim et al 2019a; using ECG and EEG measures and behavioural recordings (mouse and keyboard input). In another instance, research projects are investigating how comfortable wearable sensors can be used for recordings in more externally valid experimental scenarios and how these sensors can be used to track multiple physiological processes at once (e.g.…”